The dissertation Pathways of Musical Creativity shows that students’ musical creativity can develop in an intervention with Video Feedback Coaching for teachers, mediated by their support of students’ creative autonomy during classroom interactions in music lessons. Autonomy support entails fostering students' self-determined learning by providing space for their own choices and interests. The intervention introduced teachers to music-pedagogical strategies for enhancing classroom interaction in order to transition from a teacher- and method-centered style to a student-centered and autonomy-supportive interaction approach. This PhD research also took the nonverbal components of teachers' autonomy support into account because classroom interaction in music lessons is also nonverbal and musical in nature.Teachers changed their interaction style during the intervention to one that supported more autonomy, and they were less likely to return to mainly instruction and modelling. Although for verbal autonomy support a beneficial effect was observed, teachers found it more difficult to provide higher levels of non-verbal autonomy support in music teaching. In turn, students showed more originality and variation in their creative thinking and acting in music. Although over half of the classes engaged in playing more complex rhythmical patterns over the course of the intervention, at group-level no effect for this aspect was found in comparison to a control group. These findings suggest that in both primary education and teacher education, more focus should be placed on enhancing classroom interaction and supporting students’ creative autonomy support in music lessons.
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This chapter gives an overview on the Healthy Ageing research portfolio of the research group Lifelong Learning in Music (Hanze University of Applied Sciences Groningen, the Netherlands). Lifelong learning enables musicians to respond to the continuously changing context in which they are working nowadays, and ageing is one of the major societal changes for many western societies in the 21st century. Musicians are asked by society to contribute to healthy ageing processes, and such a contribution in turn generates possibilities for innovative musical practices with the elderly. We present a three-layered model to look at such innovative practices, which places the musical practice itself in the context of communicative characteristics of working with elderly people and in broader societal and institutional contexts. We then outline four concrete research projects: learning to play an instrument at an elderly age, creative music workshops for elderly in residential home settings, the competencies of creative music workshop leaders working with frail elderly people, and musical work with severely ill elderly people in hospitals. We describe some background values and methodological notions behind our work, and finish the article with a more extensive description of our project on Music and Dementia.
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Building on burgeoning research in the field of arts and health, this article explores the role that learning musical instruments can play in enhancing wellbeing in older adulthood. Despite an increasing focus on the role of learning in supporting mental wellbeing, there is strikingly little research that examines this in relation to music, or that explores wellbeing as a subjective phenomenon captured through mixed-methods enquiry. This research addresses this gap through two inter-related studies. Study 1 adopts questionnaire measures of wellbeing with 98 music-learning and comparison participants, concluding that learning in older adulthood offers significant wellbeing benefits, with music particularly enhancing some health-promoting behaviours. To explore in more detail what learning music means to older adults, Study 2 adopts qualitative methods with a sub-group of 21 music-learning participants, concluding that learning music can enhance subjective wellbeing through six mechanisms: (1) subjective experiences of pleasure; (2) enhanced social interactions; (3) musically-nuanced engagement in day-to-day life; (4) fulfilment of musical ambition; (5) ability to make music; and (6) self-satisfaction through musical progress. Drawing the two studies together, the article concludes by arguing for further research to contribute to the growing body of evidence placing music learning at the centre of healthy ageing agendas.
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The findings suggests that participation in music practices can significantly support caregivers' and nurses' contact with the people to whom they give care and the healthcare professionals' insights into the patients' and residents' personhood. Music can create experienced changes in the care environment through kairotic moments of connectivity and intimacy of the musical interaction. The music sessions support and reinforce the person-centred values of care delivery.The meaning of participatory music practices for the well-being and learning of healthcare professionals working with ageing patients and nursing home residents.
Tango is among the most widespread world music genres nowadays. However, only partial information about the elements and techniques of composing, arranging and performing tango has been documented and made available so far. This research project aims at investigating tango’s main aspects in the oeuvre of relevant tango musicians, promoting its creative practice and expanding its artistic community. By making the implicit knowledge in scores and recordings explicit and ready for creative use by the greater artistic community, tango can be preserved, on one side; and musicians can experiment and reach new artistic horizons, securing its continuation and development as vivid, contemporary music, on the other. The project has two research questions: 1. What are the main features and techniques of tango music composition, arrangement and performance? 2. How can musicians nowadays integrate these features and techniques into their practice to deepen their understanding and enhance their artistic creations and performances? This research uses a mixed method design, including the analysis of scores and recordings, literature review, interviews, observational studies and experimentation. It expands the artistic community on the topic and bridges two top-notch institutions devoted to tango learning: Codarts and UNSAM (Argentina). The research also endeavours improvements in the Codarts curriculum as it complements and expands its educational programme by providing students with research tools to enhance their creative practice. Theoretical and artistic outcomes will be documented and disseminated in concerts, concert-lectures, papers, articles and a tailor-made website containing compositions, arrangements, videos, text, musical examples and annotated scores, so as to record: a) the musical materials and techniques found in the analysed scores and recordings, together with their applications in practice and performance; b) the artistic processes, reflections and production of the participants; c) information on how to create, arrange and perform tangos.
